From the beginning of this course, the professor attempted
to introduce colonization from a non-ethnocentric point of view - i.e., the
traditional view point that Native Americans were violent savages that has been
the traditional view point in most history due to lack of any study of Native
American culture.

From the very beginning of colonization of America there
was a history woven between the explorers and the Native Americans. Although
America was a vast country of different Native American nations with different
languages and culture, those who interacted with Europeans often traded and
interacted with each other and kept an oral history going that was passed on.
The professor gave us materials and books attempted to show the view points of
all cultures meeting and the effects that came about from interacting with each
other.

The Cherokee removal from Georgia (along with many other
Indian nations) was an on-going conflict that did not start at any moment in
time, but developed in layers of history between the Native Americans, settlers
of various cultures, and the early U.S. government. This rich and intricate
history does not allow for easy and quick judgments as to what led to the
signing of the Treaty of Echota. That is what makes the understanding of what
happened with the signing of the treaty an on-going journey of discovery for
myself and hopefully other history students in years to come.

In 1838 to 1839, on what came to be called The Trail of Tears, two to eight
thousand Indians lost their lives on a forced march out of Georgia. Many
Cherokee Indians had attributed blame for the horrific
deaths suffered on that walk and the loss of their homes to a small faction of
Cherokees who signed a removal treaty in 1835 with the U.S. Government. The
treaty was an agreement for the Cherokee Nation to move out of Georgia and parts
of Alabama and to relocate them to Oklahoma. The “Ridge Party” as this
pro-treaty party came to be known, had actually anticipated the moral and physical
destruction of their Nation by the hands of the U.S. Government and had tried in
advance to work out a prearranged economic treaty. The Ridge Party knew that it
was punishable by death in Indian law to sign away
land by treaty but they felt they were under a moral obligation to help their
people to rebuild in a new land away from white persecution.

In the early 19th
Century the Cherokee economy was in a slump. The primary source of income until
then had been taking captives and booty during war and hunting and trading
deerskins. Now the deer population was depleted and the war of 1812 was
over. Land in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi was intensely
desirable as it was fertile ground for cotton. Along with slaves,
cotton was the prime economy in the south. The white
settlers were frustrated with Native Americans whom they perceived as doing
nothing profitable with valuable land.

In 1793 President George Washington introduced an Indian Civilization program in
hopes of “civilizing” Indians. The program was enacted by Congress as the 1793
Trade and Intercourse Act. It was thought at this time that if Indians could
be taught English and European values, that they could learn to farm land and
therefore appreciate the value of property. This in turn would cause them to
want to keep their farms and be agreeable to selling
off large tracts of land that they would now see as hugely profitable. The
President’s plan was to civilize the Indians: to teach male Indians to farm and
grow various grains and tend livestock rather than hunt,
and to have the women spin yarn then work in the traditional woman’s job of
farming. He also proposed to send missionaries to set up schools for the
children to learn English and Christianity. Indians were
given agricultural tools, animals and were given tools to spin cotton and weave
yarn in the home.

The new acculturation
program, minus the religion, was embraced enthusiastically by the Cherokees.
They learned to farm and set up business very quickly. They built homes and
purchased slaves to tend to the farms so that they did not have to do all the
hard work. It worked so well, to the anger of many Georgian citizens, that many
Cherokees were wealthier then their white neighbors and now had no intention of
selling their land.

Major Ridge
(c. 1771 – d. June 22, 1839) was a celebrated Indian Speaker at the Indian National Council and an Indian Warrior who embraced the idea of raising his children
to learn the white man’s language and assimilate into the white culture that he
had seen on his war travels. Major Ridge did not desire to desert his Indian
culture in favor of white culture, but he understood that the Cherokees could no
longer depend on hunting and much could be gained by Indian children being
educated in the white man’s culture. Major Ridge was instrumental in
establishing and supporting missionary schools throughout the Cherokee Nation
and both his daughter Sarah Paschal and son John Ridge received a full
education.

It was this new
bi-cultural lifestyle that John Ridge (b. 1803 – d. June 1839) was raised in.
Young John Ridge soon took after his father and became a member of the Cherokee
National Committee in 1824 and was elected President of the National Committee
in 1830. Albert Gallatin was a statesman in Thomas Jefferson’s cabinet. He was
collecting information about American Indians and on February 26, 1826, John
Ridge wrote to Mr. Gallatin about the Cherokee civilization. He embraced his
father’s views that white cultural advancement was an important future trend
towards Cherokee economic success.

John Ridge’s letter to
Mr. Gallatin can be seen as an optimistic outlook on assimilation of white
culture. He discussed the Cherokee’s adaptation of farming methods whereby the
males were doing mostly traditional white male manual work and the women were
doing mainly traditional white female domestic work. He discussed the adoption
of written law which was not an Indian tradition and his disgust with Indian
religion, which he deemed “superstitious” (Cherokee, 39). His letter portrayed
the enthusiasm that his father, Major Ridge, had instilled in him that
acculturation for the Cherokee people was key to future economic survival. But
the letter is mostly revealing in its last paragraphs as John Ridge tells Mr.
Gallatin that he foresaw, regardless of their progress, that Indian fate was
always going to be a struggle:

“We are urged by these
strangers to make room for their settlements and go farther west. Our National
existence is suspended on the faith & honor of the U. States alone. Their
convenience may cut this asunder, & with a little faint struggle we may cease to
be. All Nations have their rises & their falls. This has been the case with us.
Within the orbit the U. States move the States & within these we move in a
little circle, dependent on the great center. We may live this way fifty years
and then we shall by Natural Causes merge in & mingle with the U. States.
Cherokee blood, if not destroyed, will wind its courses in beings of fair
complexions, who will read that their ancestors became civilized under the
frowns of misfortunes and causes of their enemies” (Perdue, 43).

As John Ridge predicted,
the State of Georgia was growing ever impatient to take over Cherokee land. In
1802 the U.S. Government had promised to evict the Cherokees from territory in
Atlanta, Georgia and Tennessee in exchange for Georgia’s giving up territory
west to the Mississippi River. Since nothing had been done about this, in 1828
the State of Georgia decided to take matters into its own hands and take over
the “promised” Cherokee land instead of waiting for the Federal Government to
act.

However, now that Andrew
Jackson was the President of the United States, the State of Georgia was going
to get full cooperation from the U.S. Government. Ever since Andrew Jackson was
commander of the army’s southern district during the War of 1812, his motto had
been that the only sensible way to get land from tribes that refused to sell was
to take it and that to negotiate with Indians was “absurd” (Perdue, 16). When
President Jackson was a general under the Georgia militia, he raised an army,
including help from Major Ridge and several hundred Cherokees, to fight off
hostile Indian factions. While the Cherokees assisted General Jackson, white
settlers raided Cherokee homes, stoles their crops, razed their homes and threw
their families out into the wilderness. Although the Cherokees had witnesses
(including whites and military members), when they went to the U.S. Government
for redress, General Jackson denied that anything had happened at all. As
General, Andrew Jackson had often appeased Indians with demonstrations of
affection and promises of support and broke his promises. It seemed that as
President this pattern of dealing with Native Americans had not changed.

To prevent Georgia from the
violent takeover of Indian lands, John Ridge brought suit in the United States
Supreme Court. The court case Cherokee Nation v. Georgia asked the court
to intervene on behalf of the Cherokee Indians and rule that Georgia no right to
enforce its laws within the Nation. The Supreme Court Justice John Marshall
declined to rule on the case saying the federal government did not have
jurisdiction to make any rules that pertained to Cherokee land (Perdue, 69).
Georgia’s citizens saw this refusal of the Federal Government to interfere as a
sign that the Cherokees were defenseless and would not be protected from
violence. The citizens went forth and committed atrocities, taking land, beating
and killing Cherokees within the full legal rights of the state of Georgia.

A second case brought by
John Ridge, Worcester v Georgia was heard in the United States Supreme
Court by Supreme Court Justice John Marshall as well. This case received a
favorable opinion from the Supreme Court yet it still spelled complete doom for
the Cherokees. When it came time for President Jackson to enforce the law, his
now famous statement “Well, now John Marshall has made his decision, let him
enforce it,” made it clear he was going to let the state of Georgia continue its
genocide (Ehle, 255).

It was at this time that
Major Ridge and his son John lost complete faith in President Jackson. The
party members had been meeting with the President all the while and been
receiving assurances that their interests were being looked after. The Ridge
party now realized after the two lawsuits the best thing for the Cherokee people
would be to remove themselves from the white settlers. If they took money from
the U.S. Government they could continue to educate their children, farm, and
perhaps face the whites on a more equal footing in the future.

In 1830 the US Congress and
Andrew Jackson passed the Indian Removal Bills for which he applauded himself at
his December 6, 1830 State of the Union Address “…true philanthropy reconciles
the mind to those vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one generation to
make room for another”(Perdue 118). Jackson’s sentiment in his state of the
union speech was that the Indians had no right to complain that the U.S. was
offering them new land to roam in and was offering to pay them for grazing land.
His views held that the way of life for all humans was to conquer and be
conquered. As the white man was pushed out of his land and was now seeking new
land to survive in, so must the Indian be prepared to leave the home of his
ancestors.

In December of 1835, The
Ridge Party signed a removal treaty with officials of the United States
Government in New Echota, Georgia, which treaty was thereafter known at the
Treaty of New Echota. The treaty made provisions that the United States
government would pay the Cherokee people five million dollars,
cover costs of relocation and give them land to remove to which would be now
known as the land of Oklahoma.

The treaty
also went on to stipulate that the government would comfortably move the Indians
to their new homes by steamboat and wagon and provide medical care and agents to
make sure their transition was easy and comfortable and assist them for one year
after arriving at their new homes. In exchange for this, the Cherokee people
would agree within leave Georgia and Alabama for unpopulated country now known
as Oklahoma within two years of signing the treaty. The U.S. government agreed
to pay damages to anyone who harmed or damaged Indian property or persons within
or before that time.

The treaty
explained that the President of the United States would provide agents of the
U.S. Government to set up the monies that were going to be paid to the Indians
in a trust and orphans fund, and monies would also be provided to set up a
school.

Because of
dissent within the Cherokee Nation political factions, the anti-treaty party led
by Cherokee Chief John Ross believed that Andrew Jackson would come through
finally and enforce the Supreme lawsuits that had been won by the Cherokees. He
also believed he could negotiate a better deal for treaty should the Indians
still have to remove. Ross urged most of the Cherokee Nation to remain where
they were so when the two years were up most people had not made preparations to
leave (Perdue, 160). This lack of preparation led to
forced expulsion by Federal Troops and the legendary Trail of Tears that caused
so many deaths. That the Ridge pro-treaty party was blamed for the
subsequent debacle was also thought to be the cause of their later deaths in
1839.

The sad
fact is that there were many reasons that led to the Trail of Tears that had nothing to do with
the Ridge party. There were many involved in the betrayal of the Cherokee
Indians from anti-treaty members who wanted to renegotiate the treaty at the
last minute to receive higher payments for themselves, to unscrupulous Chiefs
who were already signing off parcels of land in return for bribes, to U.S.
President Jackson who never had any intention of helping the Indians in the
first place. The pro-treaty party knew that they would be denounced by various
political Indian factions because they took the unpopular stand for all the
right reasons and they paid the price with their lives as they knew they would.